"Apple vs. Samsung initially ended with a billion-dollar verdict in favor of Apple, but there have been plenty of wrinkles since. This week brought about another, as Nokia filed an amicus brief on behalf of Apple, Inc. in the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. In the brief filed Monday, Nokia asked the court to permit permanent injunctions on the sale of Samsung phones that were found to infringe Apple's patents." In the meantime, the latest comScore figures for the US show that Windows Phone's market share actually declined during the launch of Windows Phone 8. It's pretty clear that, combined with the disappointing quarterly results for Nokia, the company is setting itself up for the future. In this future, Nokia's patent portfolio is worth more than their actual phone business, and as such, Nokia can't do anything but support Apple in this case, else the value of their portfolio goes down.

In case of Russia or other Soviet block countries it is absolutely not surprising to me. Smartphone market share is substantially lower there than in developed world. Many people are still migrating from dumb phones, where Nokia was considered a top brand for years.

Majority of them don't even know what a joke of a manufacturer Nokia has become since then, but are being misled by aggressive advertising of the latest and greatest, better than Android or iPhone, platform.

But lol @ 3.1% global share and falling.

Yes, Italy with 14% and the United Kingdom with 6%, or Finland with 17% sure are Soviet satellites. /s

Windows Phone has an overall 7% share and growing in Europe. Its doubled its share YoY in a lot of regions (including the US).

I think in light of this, along with more lower priced Lumias (a lot of the Eastern Europe WP sales are attributed to low cost Lumia handsets) you'll see Europe continue to make gains, and China start to pick up.

I'd caution you against being on the wrong side of history with your pessimism.

Yes, Italy with 14% and the United Kingdom with 6%, or Finland with 17% sure are Soviet satellites. /s

Well, Finland looks a no-brainer. Would be strange for Nokia to lose foot even in its native market. Substantially higher than global percent in Italy hints at possible pushes of contract bundles or otherwise depends on local market specifics.

We should not forget how the market is structured. There's always a portion of people, who do not care about platforms, fragmentation, openness or application store policies but rather features of a particular phone they liked. This group is very gullible and easy to convert to any platform given enough advertising and promotion.

Until the figure of WP global market penetration is out of statistical insignificance of a couple of percents, I can't find myself relying on it. My pessimism is OK, since I'm not trying to predict the future, but follow what everybody else is using now.

I'd caution you against being on the wrong side of history with your pessimism.

The US distorts this quite a bit given the sheer size of the market. Nokia knows they have a US problem. They do. However just because a US problem distorts global market share statistics, does not imply that they're not doing well in other parts of the world.

This Windows Phone isn't selling meme died with WP8. Definitively.

They have a long way to go, but small to modest sales does not mean nobody is buying them.